History has taught us a thirst for war remains

Warwick McFadyen

I cannot think of any advantage which has been reaped by any country in the world from this increase of military and naval expenditure. But I can think of a good deal of harm which has been done to all countries … The common sense of the industrial classes, be they capitalist or labour, has risen against this organised insanity. This is a propitious moment for reconsidering the question of armaments.

Australian troops in Flanders trudge along a timber road sinking into the mire.

In six months, Franz Ferdinand, the archduke of Austria, would be assassinated. From that shot over the next four years millions of people would die. Lloyd George would go on to become, somewhat ironically, munitions minister in 1915 - and then prime minister in 1916.

War is mortal conflict. We have now either to destroy or be destroyed.

H.G. Wells, from The War That Will End War, August 1914

In the 20 years to the start of World War I, the nations of Europe had been engaged in an armaments race to the death, fuelled by rising nationalism, militarism and colonial skirmishes. When the guns of August opened fire, the continent was a tangled mass of tripwires coated in the mildew of allegiances, alliances and interests that crisscrossed borders from down the centuries. But while countries spoke of peace in that year and the immediate years before it, the war machine was moving into higher and higher gear.

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When the archduke died, the hum along the wires bespoke catastrophe.

Only a year earlier the Peace Palace at The Hague had officially opened. It was to be home for the Permanent Court of Arbitration to end war. (It's now home to the International Court of Justice.)

After 1918, a League of Nations was established to stop world war recurring. It didn't work either. By 1939, the world was at war again. This time 60 million people would die. The United Nations was formed in its ashes.

From 1914 to 2014, it has been estimated the death toll from wars has been upwards of 200 million people. Think of Australia being wiped clean of people nine times over.

Before the second conflagration, Lloyd George wrote in his memoirs: It is not pleasant to remember how men and women devoted energy, intelligence and zeal for four and a half years to the work of destruction and pain. But it must be told if such a calamity is to be averted in the future.

The road to victory had been a ''bloodstained stagger''. Lloyd George spoke of the armaments ''machines'' that nations were building. No one thought a ''prairie fire'' could scorch a continent. But it did.

The former munitions minister had written his memoirs in the early '30s. He was thus destined to see his hopes dashed. He died six weeks before the war in Europe ended.

Of course, armed conflict did not stop after World War II. None after have been world wars. Instead, they have been within borders or without borders, nations and non-nations. Warfare now has evolved, if that is the right word, into hijacked planes being flown into the enemy's buildings and unmanned planes launching missiles at targets from a hand at a desk thousands of kilometres from the target.

The Cold War perfected humankind's genius in manufacturing our annihilation through nuclear weapons. No other creature could quite so deliberately engineer its own downfall. Despite the pullback in weaponry by the US and Russia, there are still more than enough warheads to do it. No other creature could quite so deliberately stockpile death.

And then there is the constant background noise of slaughter. That is, small arms, the number of which is conservatively put at 875 million worldwide; with 700,000 more being produced annually and 50,000 people dying each year from their use.

And then there are chemical weapons; at least here the global community has been more willing to hold our particular genius at bay. Why? Does a death biologically induced abhor us more than a bullet to the head?

Last year, the world's military expenditure stood at more than $1.5 trillion. The top six nations are the US, Russia, China, Britain, Japan and France. At almost $700 billion, the US spends as much as the other five combined.

These war chests would suggest that nations are in a perpetual state of readiness for war. Perhaps they are. Only a foolish one would not have the means to defend itself. The Treaty of Versailles after WWI was labelled ''the peace to end all peace'' because of the victors' strangulating restrictions on Germany and its emphasis on Germany's sole guilt for the war.

A century on from Lloyd George's misgivings, the planet is pockmarked with the scars and wounds of war past and present - from Asia to the Middle East, from Africa to Manhattan. Is it a measure of progress that none have been world wars? The obvious answer is yes. But.

There are history lessons and learning from history. They are not the same thing.

I'll leave the last word to Lloyd George: There were powerful elements … that thirsted for war. The military chiefs … were not averse from putting their theories, plans, and hopes to the test. All of them believed in the machine they had helped to perfect, and they were confident that if tried it would prove triumphant.